The websites of a number of multinationals worldwide have been experiencing outages, monitoring website Downdetector said on Thursday.
They include the sites of major US airline companies American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Major banks in Australia have also reported online outages affecting their websites and apps.
It was not immediately clear if the outages in Australia and the US were linked.
The firms said they were urgently investigating the matter.
The effect of the outage on Australia’s financial sector
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said it was canceling its operation to buy long-dated government bonds.
“Due to technical difficulties, today’s RBA long-dated open market operations auction has been canceled,” the bank said.
The outages in Australia began around 2:10 p.m. local time (0510 GMT), according to Downdetector.
“We understand that some of our customers are currently experiencing issues accessing our services,” the country’s largest financial firm Commonwealth Bank told AFP. “This issue is affecting multiple organizations, including many of the major banks.”
The Commonwealth Bank later announced on Twitter that it “is starting to see services return to normal.”
Another banking group, ANZ, also said most “services look to be up and running.”
sri/rt (AFP, Reuters)